every exhilarated throat that’s ever exhaled a command to their fellow players

just in the nick of time

here’s to the game of soccer

here’s to the nationalist thumping

legs jutting

kicking out into the framework of a ferris wheel

grinding in slow mo towards the sky

where then we’ll kiss

get to the route of this

war and peace

celebrate this rare treat

a nation revived

with pride

CONGRATULATIONS IRAQ!

In your awesome victory over Saudi Arabia in the Asian Cup Final, you so deserve this.

Peace,

NaXaL

P.S. Dear reader, so diligently at the end of this entry, u deserve to know that I’m in the midst of a major and incredible transition to the East Coast. And I just had a talking to by author Walter Mosley, who told me and a few others that its time to focus on some thangs. So I’ma get a bit ghost people. Keep checking back, you’ll love yourself for it, promise to gods.

GO IRAQ!!

In Iraqi Kurdistan, the streets of Sulaimaniyah were flooded with revellers.

It’s been a deep and yet not deep enough day in the news. Keep reading for today’s Hip Hop based commentary on what New York Times headline articles say and, more importantly, don’t say, by political poet Naxal. That’s me. I flips the news like you never seen. Almost on the Daily. Enjoy.

July 23, 2007

I caught up with this stirring picture on the NY Times website today:

This sign of the times would be well placed anywhere. No, it would not clash with the patterns of my heart, or the issues of each home in every hood across the globe, or the color in the rain, or the homebaked smell of multiply-marginalized strangers connecting on the Christopher Street Pier. But perhaps its bold roll call would not go well in a purse shoe combination with the greedy sigh of chairs waiting to be filled in plastic classrooms across the country. Yet mainly, this sign of the times would be well placed anywhere. Where is it? The New York Times caption reads: A sign expresses solidarity with the community outside the Common Ground Health Clinic in the Algiers section of New Orleans.

What was the weekend in news?

A New York Times Sunday Magazine front page on Juvenile Sex Offenders. The issue is still a shamed one, and the boy model pictured has his head covered like a scarlet letter updated. When I get in the headspace to read through the article, I’ll let you know what I think.

A Newsweek Magazine front page on Islam in America, with many colors and genders and ages. Perhaps the first humanization of Muslim people on a mainstream magazine that I have ever seen in my life. Good, it is indeed a good sign. Frightfully overdue. And good. When I get in the headspace to read through the article, I’ll let you know what I think. 🙂

And my own front page article on a warm summer Saturday night on the Christopher Street Pier:

The Christopher Street Pier is alive and well, even a throng still on the street on the benches kissing and streaming towards the manicured lawn covered water. Thrumming lime greens, grinding ripe oranges, and impossibly glossy lipped still and despite and because. It has always been this way. An elder sat cross legged and regal, watching quietly, mental pictures painting what from these young gun images, god knows. Later an endearingly admittedly drunk young queen tossed about reads from person to person she’s giving me mary j. blige with that bang, no honey not bangs, that bang and when he saw the elder floating by with the rest of the 1am exodus he said look at esmeralda from the hunch back of notre dam with her gypsy skirt and she was like that too fine and a bridge, a pier.

The Christopher Street Pier is alive and well even underneath the spray of new age firehoses this era more cowardly the douse of automatic sprinklers thinly veiled arcs across the grass cause mainly they were pointed at us, the gay, the coloured, the bright, the amorous, the loud, the quiet, we were so quiet when the water began to turn light wood to dark glass. I yelled BOO! for a few moments, and then made do like everyone else. And still, despite and because of the water, the SUV rent a cops said the young man with the sharp lines and the glass lips, and still despite and because of the poised men on the barricades by the stop light cross walk, and still we stayed. A direct action every night there on the Pier. I’m still fresh on the scene, will be for a minute, and that will change, but my emotions at the sight of once thriving and laughing benches drenched into empty desolation remodeled for this your status quo emptiness will not go away, my feelings and breathing and being will not disappear at one.

You could read the whole paper, or you could read me. Stay tuned for more of All the News That’s Fit to Flip by political poet, NaXaL.

It’s been a deep and yet not deep enough day in the news. Keep reading for today’s Hip Hop based commentary on what New York Times headline articles say and, more importantly, don’t say, by political poet Naxal. That’s me. I flips the news like you never seen. Almost on the Daily. Enjoy.

July 18, 2007

Midtown Manhattan’s all steamed up from an explosion they say its a pipe not a pipe bomb, and thus while you may feel terror, there is no need to use the term terrorist. Hey, I like that, let’s keep that in mind America, I am feeling terror, but that person is not called a terrorist. I mean why not, there’s so many other words, like, what about scareorist. Or, meanie. Misunderstood? Human Being.

In other news:

“The Catholic Church in the United States has so far paid more than $2 billion in settlements and legal judgments to victims of sexual abuse and their families.” DAMN, that’s almost, what, two days of war funding that tax payers are still being saddled with and I’ll be damned if showing me the Senator’s and the makeshift cots on the front page today, you know, the ones they might just have to sleep in for their all night deliberations on the war in iraq, oh honey you’re working so hard, it’s alright wife, its my duty to the united states of america, makes me feel more endeared towards them or in any way confident that real work, good work, is getting done. a bit of spitfire, never hurt no one, right?(catholic church quote: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/16/us/16abuse.html?ref=us; sentate cots picutre: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/18/washington/18cong.html)

The front page of the New York Times yesterday showed a survivor of sexual violence crying in mourning of the life lost at the hands of violence, and “bittersweet” relief in acknowledgement of the large settlement offered by the Catholic Church to atone for the pandemic rape and molestation perpetrated by the clergy of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. The Catholic Church offered its settlement to the group of 508 survivors 2 days before it was all set to be hashed out in a court of law, four years after “legal combat” began on the issue. $660 million dollars for 508 victims, amounting to approximately 1.3 million per victim. I think its all bad that the church waited till the last minute before paying up, they know people were stressing over having to testify about what happened to them at the hands of the white collars in front of all present in a courtroom, that’s not a safe environment to tell a tender story. But shit, aint nobody paying me millions to rectify what has been lost, so you know, I say its also time to rejoice, in some ways. I mean, more power to alla yall 508, and I pray you turn around and invest that shit right back into the failing, dilapidated social network that sexual abuse survivors have and do not have to lean on in order to get our lives back on track. Invest it. And yes, I’m hating. 🙂 (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/us/17abuse.html?_r=1&oref=slogin)

And on to some United States Social Forum commentary:

Where was the art at the United States Social Forum?

I know, it was over there by the falafel tent, the rocking bands from New Orleans, the MC’s from Chicago, the ReadNek poets. You’re right, that’s where it was. That’s right, it was at the Youth Tent, that Friday night, when even I got on the mic to rip a lil something called: “this goes out to the me, the you, the us, the we,” and manju held it down to make sure all the dope poets and musicians in the house got a turn to rock nice. You’re right, art and craft was at the Forum, it was over there on the side.

Are we really that entrenched in our own idealogical structures that we can’t even imagine another world in our own bodies, not just another world, but other worlds, plural, in our own bodies, worlds where we sit and debate in political passion, then stand and dance in unison and trust, then listen with respect to elders who have something to say, and next look each other in the eye as we sing together, with no one audience, and no one star.

From what I saw, 99% of the art existed on side stages, barely ever gracing the main stage or plenaries. When it did, it was a welcome oasis, the Domestic Workers Calypso Band, for example, or Alice Lovelace’s grand poem finale. But for the most part, we sat, or spoke, in clearly dilineated lines of student/teacher, listener/speaker, whereas a Forum wide incorporation of the creative, would have made moot these equations, morphed the lines into shades of creator/creator. All praises to the creator, cause I’m sappy like that, and spiritual like that, and it was indeed a blessed occassion. But don’t hand me a movement with art on the side, cause for me its a main course, like subji.

Stay tuned for more of All the News That’s Fit to Flip, by political poet NaXaL. You could read the news or you could read me, I say do both!